Very few things in human life are truly all or nothing. Almost everything works on a sliding scale, even slavery. The problem is, very few people have ever studied slavery, leaving them with a few emotional slogans instead of actual knowledge.
A Roman slave in a major city, for example, could start and run his own business, might be very rich, and might even become a major intellectual, like Epictetus. A Roman slave working in a mine… well… that was about as bad as it gets.
So, all-or-nothing representations of slavery are false and more often than not are propaganda. This being the case, a question sits in front of us: How enslaved are we? People sometimes get very upset over such questions, but not because they’re invalid. They get upset because they don’t want to confront such thoughts.
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